breath to spare for an encouraging word:  but the turmoil of terror that had scattered their self-command like chaff before the wind, converted their desperate exertions into a bit of fooling, upon my word, fit for knockabout clowns in a farce.  They pushed with their hands, with their heads, they pushed for dear life with all the weight of their bodies, they pushed with all the might of their souls—­only no sooner had they succeeded in canting the stem clear of the davit than they would leave off like one man and start a wild scramble into her.  As a natural consequence the boat would swing in abruptly, driving them back, helpless and jostling against each other.  They would stand nonplussed for a while, exchanging in fierce whispers all the infamous names they could call to mind, and go at it again.  Three times this occurred.  He described it to me with morose thoughtfulness.  He hadn’t lost a single movement of that comic business.  “I loathed them.  I hated them.  I had to look at all that,” he said without emphasis, turning upon me a sombrely watchful glance.  “Was ever there any one so shamefully tried?”

’He took his head in his hands for a moment, like a man driven to distraction by some unspeakable outrage.  These were things he could not explain to the court—­and not even to me; but I would have been little fitted for the reception of his confidences had I not been able at times to understand the pauses between the words.  In this assault upon his fortitude there was the jeering intention of a spiteful and vile vengeance; there was an element of burlesque in his ordeal—­a degradation of funny grimaces in the approach of death or dishonour.

’He related facts which I have not forgotten, but at this distance of time I couldn’t recall his very words:  I only remember that he managed wonderfully to convey the brooding rancour of his mind into the bare recital of events.  Twice, he told me, he shut his eyes in the certitude that the end was upon him already, and twice he had to open them again.  Each time he noted the darkening of the great stillness.  The shadow of the silent cloud had fallen upon the ship from the zenith, and seemed to have extinguished every sound of her teeming life.  He could no longer hear the voices under the awnings.  He told me that each time he closed his eyes a flash of thought showed him that crowd of bodies, laid out for death, as plain as daylight.  When he opened them, it was to see the dim struggle of four men fighting like mad with a stubborn boat.  “They would fall back before it time after time, stand swearing at each other, and suddenly make another rush in a bunch. . . .  Enough to make you die laughing,” he commented with downcast eyes; then raising them for a moment to my face with a dismal smile, “I ought to have a merry life of it, by God! for I shall see that funny sight a good many times yet before I die.”  His eyes fell again.  “See and hear. . . .  See and hear,” he repeated twice, at long intervals, filled by vacant staring.